


i just wanna be somebody to someone (someone to you)

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 01:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19308106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: Lance Hunter shows up at her door in the middle of the night, bleeding.May's prepared for this.





	i just wanna be somebody to someone (someone to you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agentmmayy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmmayy/gifts).



Mel was a light sleeper. Always had been, probably always would be. It was a benefit in her line of work - she never knew when she’d need to be out of bed in ten seconds flat.

It was annoying as hell when there was a knocking on her door in the middle of the night. The knocking had started a minute ago, and Mel had expected whoever was there would’ve pissed off - did they seriously expect a woman living alone in the middle of the city to open the door in the middle of the night? - but they hadn’t. If anything the knocking had gotten louder and more insistent. 

Eventually Mel couldn’t ignore the knocking anymore. She got out of bed, stalking through the kitchen and to the front door before wrenching it open.

“What the fuck do you -  _ shit _ , Hunter.” 

Lance Hunter was standing in front of her, clutching his stomach. Even without the red seeping through his fingers Mel would’ve known he was hurt. Hunter only ever showed up on his door when he needed something or he wanted to piss her off. She stepped back so Hunter could stagger into her apartment. He made it to the kitchen table, leaning against it with the arm he wasn’t using to apply pressure to the wound.

“What happened?” Mel asked, flicking on the lights and opening one of the kitchen cabinets and grabbing the bottle of whiskey there. Mel didn’t drink the stuff, but Hunter had show up on her doorstep enough times that she hadn’t tried to pawn the swill off to Phil or one of her other colleagues. 

“Brought my fists to a knife fight,” Hunter wheezed. “Can I have some of that?” 

“No.” Mel rummaged through her drawers until she found the suture kit she kept there. “I can’t tell how much you’re bleeding if you’re drunk.”

Hunter rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest. He sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, and Mel kept an eye on him as she washed her hands, scrubbing underneath her fingers carefully. She didn’t have any gloves with her, but she sure as hell didn’t want to get Hunter’s wound infected. It was bad enough that it was a knife wound - who knew what was on the blade.

Mel re-entered the kitchen, setting the suture kit on the table by Hunter’s elbow before kneeling in front of him. He removed his hand from his stomach before she asked him to. Mel’s face was carefully blank as she surveyed the wound, and she flipped open the top of the first aid box with a single efficient motion. 

“Take off your shirt,” she ordered as she poured whiskey onto a gauze pad. Hunter grunted as he jerked his tank top off over his head, settling back against the chair with a pained noise.

Served him right.

“A knife fight, really, Hunter?” Mel asked as she dragged the gauze pad over Hunter’s wound. It was deep, but didn’t appear to have touched anything other than skin and fat. That was a damn miracle. “Do you ever listen to me? The only way to win a knife fight -”

“Is not to get into a knife fight, yeah,” Hunter hissed through gritted teeth. “Hate to tell you this Mel, but I didn’t ask to get knifed.”

Melinda shook her head, exasperated. He could’ve fooled her, with the way he went running towards trouble instead of away from it. She was the same way, but unlike Hunter, she knew how to handle herself. Hunter was competent, but his idea of risk mitigation was to do the stupidest thing possible and hope it worked because no one saw it coming.

Mel discarded the first bit of gauze and soaked another in the whiskey. She had gotten most of the blood off with the first pass, but she needed the gash to be as clean as possible before she started stitching it closed.

Hunter flinched away when she began cleaning the wound again, and Mel sighed. “Hold still,” she murmured, looking up at Hunter’s face for the first time. His hazel eyes were dark even under the fluorescent kitchen lights, and Mel swallowed hard. She hated having to take care of Hunter, and most of that was because she hated seeing him in pain.

He stared back down at her, his ragged breathing filling the space between them where words couldn’t hold. 

She blinked first.

Mel turned her gaze down to the linoleum floor, taking a moment to make sure her hands wouldn’t shake before opening the suture packet. 

“Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?”

“I’ll believe it when you stop doing this shit to yourself.”

“It’s not like I can -”

“You damn well can, Hunter, you just choose not to!” Mel snapped, stabbing the needle through his skin with more force than was necessary. 

“I can but I  _ can’t _ .” The edge in Hunter’s voice was from more than just pain. “It’s not like anyone else is out there fighting for those people.”

“Yes, you’re such a damn hero, I get it.” She kept stitching.

“If you don’t want me to come back, I get it.” Hunter shifted slightly, and Mel growled at him so he would get the message to  _ stay still _ . “But you’re the only one I…” His voice cracked, from strain or pain or something else, she didn’t know. “I trust you.”

“God knows why.”

“Don’t need God to know, as long as you do.” Mel had to stop her stitching - her hands were shaking again.

“Why, Hunter?”

“Because you hate me, but -”

“I don’t hate you,” she interrupted. “You regularly piss me off, but I don’t hate you.”

Hunter smiled a crooked smile. “Good to know.”

“Finish your sentence.”

“You don’t hate me, but you… you always made me feel like I was  _ worth _ something. Because to hate someone - or be pissed off because of them - means that they matter at least a little, and I…” He hissed out a breath. “I shouldn’t be talking this much.”

“No.” Mel’s hands had steadied, and she returned to Hunter’s wound. Three stitches later the kitchen was still silent and the gash was closed. Mel put a wad of gauze over the stitches, taping it on with expert precision.

“Guest bedroom’s second door on the right,” she said, pointing him down the hallway.

“You make me feel like I’m someone,” Hunter blurted out before he even stood up. “I want to be someone.”

“You are someone, idiot. Nobodies don’t risk their damn lives doing vigilante justice.” 

“Yeah,” Hunter said softly. He stood, turned, and left the kitchen without another word. Mel didn’t normally care about offending Hunter - he had thicker skin (figuratively) than he gave himself credit for - but as he walked gingerly away she felt her heart tug. There was something she was missing about his little outburst, and she had a feeling when morning came and he wasn’t in so much pain she wouldn’t be able to cajole the answer out of him.

She told herself she should go back to her bedroom.

That wasn’t where she ended up. Instead she stood in the doorway of the guest bedroom, looking into the blurry darkness until she could make out the shape of a body under the sheets.

Hunter rolled over, and Mel knew he saw her standing in the doorway.

She didn’t breathe.

He didn’t look away.

“I’d better stay with you. In case it damaged more than we thought.”  _ Pathetic excuse. _

He didn’t call her on it, nodding silently.

Mel slid into bed beside Hunter, trying to maintain a respectful distance. It was hard, since the bed was a double and not really designed for two people to have any extra space between them. Her shoulder brushed against Hunter’s, and he didn’t move away.

“I hope you’re not doing this for the wrong reasons, Lance,” she whispered.

“I’m not.”

She had no choice but to believe him.

\---

Mel woke up tangled around Hunter, like they were lovers instead of rivals. She didn’t know where her body ended and his began. Worse, she  _ liked _ it. She liked the security of his arms wound around her shoulders, the steady thump of his heart beneath her cheek, the way his leg was hooked around her knees.

Extricating herself from the mess of limbs without waking Hunter was a task. Theoretically she could have just woken him up, but practically… she was never going to do that.

She wasn’t more than five minutes into her morning routine when there was a knock on the bathroom door.

“I’m leaving.”

Mel opened the bathroom door, blinking up at Hunter. “You’ll be okay?”

“Yeah, I will be.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “Be safe. I don’t want to have to stitch you up again this month.”

“Next month, though?” Hunter obviously felt better, because his eyes were sparkling with a mischief that had been absent the night previous. Mel wondered how much of it he actually remembered. He hadn’t been in that much pain, but… it would be convenient if he forgot everything he said, and everything she said in response.

Not that she had said anything damning. But it was easier if he didn’t get any ideas in his head. Especially not about them sleeping in the same bed. That was a one-time thing, in case he had been bleeding internally. 

“Hopefully not ever again,” Mel answered. It was a pipe dream to think Hunter would never show up bleeding at her door again, but it was a nice one.

“If you don’t -”

“Come back here,” she said before he could finish. “Please.”

“Alright.” Hunter twisted his mouth into a smirk. “See you when I see you, then.”

He turned away, and Mel went back to her morning like nothing had happened the night before.

(Nothing  _ did _ happen -

At least not the way it should have.)


End file.
